Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation affirms safety of telmisartan with an analysis of 50,000 patients and strongly disagrees with the publication of Sipahi et al in Lancet Oncology June 2010

INGELHEIM, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For NON-US Medical Media Only- Telmisartan, an angiotensin receptor blocker, is one of the best researched drugs worldwide. It has been studied in clinical trials in more than 50,000 patients. Its positive safety profile has been confirmed also in a market exposure of 34.5 million patient years. Convincing safety data for patients with a high cardiovascular risk were collected in the three long-term outcome trials ONTARGET, PRoFESS and TRANSCEND which followed some of the patients for up to five years. Following rigorous assessment of the data from these studies it was concluded that there was no association with an increased risk of cancer in the telmisartan arms.